Rate.com Founder

White Sox fans have an especially close connection to Guaranteed Rate — the company that purchased the naming rights to the team’s stadium in 2016.

The company’s founder, Victor Ciardelli, is happy to keep it that way.

Victor grew up in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook. Back then, classmates wouldn’t have predicted Victor would become the CEO of a major mortgage company — he wasn’t exactly a star student.

After recalibrating his attitude in college, and in keeping with his underdog-made-good mentality, it was failure and frustration in the commercial real estate world that eventually led him to start Guaranteed Rate, the seventh largest residential mortgage company by volume in the United States.